“In order to remain on the leading edge of the multi-cultural wave that has swept through the retail market on a national, as well as a regional and local scale, we made a strategic decision to search for and recruit the best team available,” said managing director Hans Mumper. “This is one of the highest-profile teams that, together with our already dominant retail teams in the Southern California market, can make us truly dominant in the multi-cultural marketplace that is California.”

The new team's primary focus is assisting in the procurement of national credit tenants for under-served markets, Rodriquez tells GlobeSt.com. “With fewer retail developments available in multi-cultural /urban trade areas when compared to their suburban counterparts, urban-focused clients have fewer options. And, opportunities can only be identified by market experts with the knowledge to uncover and take advantage of the best real estate opportunities available.”

Rodriguez is a veteran commercial broker and developer with a background in statistics. He has been studying data on the Hispanic market before it was fashionable, and “used that to pinpoint opportunities and the passive growth over the market.”

Now, he says, “for the first time in 20 years, retailers have actually made a focused effort on better penetrating these markets. The growth of that market forced them to open their eyes.”

Regional tenants are the prime opportunity, Rodriguez says, and notes that they “consistently out-perform their mainstream peers in terms of sales volume. It's a fact that the better independent grocers are doing three times the national average in terms of sales,” a figure he pegs at $800-$900 per square foot, versus $300 per square foot for national chains. “The regionals are more in touch and nimble than national chains.”

Asked if today's independents could be the nationals of the future, Rodriguez says, “potentially. I think there's probably another decade of opportunities to focus on in this niche. I can tell you from my experience, if you study market share, our group controls the dominant share of neighborhood and community centers in the No. 1 market in the U.S. Am I smarter? I think I am more experienced than most. But I think it has everything to do with the fact that (other brokers) are not from these markets, not from these communities. You have to understand the geography and the relationships and the community leaders with the niche leaders.”

The future of retail is mixed-use, Rodriquez says, “because of the limited amount of undeveloped land. Mixed-use is the solution, and most of the businesses that are being successfully developed in the niche are home-grown," Rodriquez says.

“Our value proposition is connecting people with those unique businesses,” he says. “A lot of our clients have great relationships and great data outside of the Hispanic market. We help them fill in the blanks. It also kind of differentiates the group from the majority of brokers that are really cherry-picking and make no commitment to focusing on the market. What I would like to think that we do is helping our clients provision for the future, allowing them to capitalize on the growth of the market, backed with hard data.”

CBRE declined comment on the move of the three brokers to Colliers.

As previously reported in GlobeSt.com, Colliers International in South Florida is also making changes to accommodate the market's new realities.